The demand and market for containers or boxes useful in the pizza carry-out or delivery service has risen dramatically over the last 10 years. Today, about 1 Billion boxes are used annually in the United States for this purpose and the number of local pizza shops and the addition of pizza making capability to existing establishments continues to rise dramatically.
Conventional boxes on the market experience many technical problems related to product quality deterioration, boxmaterial consumption, labor intensive box assembly, large storage space requirement near the oven location, single use life-time, environmental concerns, and others.
One effective and efficient box design and construction is disclosed in pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/082410 entitled "Pizza Box" by M. Valdman et al, filed Jun. 24, 1993, which is a CIP of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/860,177 filed Mar. 30, 1992, also entitled "Pizza Box", now abandoned. Said prior applications include citations and discussions of many prior art disclosures which are incorporated herein by reference. The co-pending patent application discloses a box for protecting a hot pizza product that includes design features that avoids the aforementioned problems.